Jay & Jean-Paul, Friday Afternoon

[x-quebecois.livejournal.com]

Jay sees Jean-Paul and attempts to tackle him. He does not succeed.


"Whoooo ha!!!" Jay called out from above as he came crashing down to Earth. It was probably one of his poorer landings and he wouldn't have been so land-skip-and-skid if he hadn't thought he'd just seen a ghost. Without any restraint, the metal-winged twenty-two year old dove down with every intention to smashed into Jean-Paul with all the enthusiasm of a teenager.

Except Jean-Paul ducked.

Without any time to pull up and all the restraint gone from his landing, Jay's converse slipped, hopped, stumbled and tripped into a headlong face plant into the side of a rock-hard snowbank that was really nothing of a snowbank at all, but the remains of what was melted into sold piece of ice. When Jay's body stopped rolling, he lay on his stomach, face down and unmoving.

Jean-Paul blinked at the younger man from the spot where he'd dropped to the ground, only his increased speed saving him from what appeared to have been a kamikaze dive of some sort. He recognised the wings and the blue skin a moment later and his eyes narrowed as he pushed himself up. Without moving any closer, he said, "Jay?"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, the dive-reaction mixed with excitement had been completely appropriate to the adrenaline rush he'd felt upon seeing Jean-Paul but his body was currently telling him it served him right for such a stupid move and that there was no way he was going to get up or even be responsive for an entire minute.

Moving forward just a step, Jean-Paul watched Jay's prone body carefully, then reached over and nudged the younger man's foot with his own boot-clad toes. "That was poorly done, aime."

A metal wing swept back in an arch, aggressively so, but Jay's body was slow to respond, like the two were not made up of the same decisive movements. His wings bristled, flexing protectively over Jay until he pushed his upper body off the ground, grunting as he did so. "That... hurt like hell. Welcome home," he mumbled. Embarrassment hadn't set in yet, but it was going to.

"It was a hard landing," Jean-Paul said, having stepped back at the movement from the Southerner's wings. He had no desire to be on the receiving end of anything those might give him. "Thank you." There wasn't much to be thankful for, really. But Jean-Paul couldn't exactly explain that. "Why did you..." He gestured toward the ice and then the ground.

Jay finally managed to get himself half way up, wings tilted back, rubbing at his neck and revealed a lot of scratches to his forearms and face, although they were healing fairly quickly. "Jean-Paul Beaubier, are you really askin' me that?" he asked, arching a brow and looking up from where he knelt. "Next time, don't duck. Momentum don't let ya stop if there ain't nuttin' there."

"So that I can be the one with the cuts and the scrapes?" Jean-Paul asked, brows arching right back at the young man. "No, thank you. I will duck next time, as well, if you feel the need to dive at me from on high." He was smirking just the tiniest bit, though. His memories weren't quite so obviously patchy where Jay was concerned, at least. Jean-Paul wasn't comfortable, wasn't able to think of things with any real feeling of familiarity, but at least he didn't seem to be so completely off balance.

"Yeah well, next time Ah won't say hi and just let you walk on by," Jay said, a frown crossing his features as he stood up. Served him right for that one. He refrained from telling Jean-Paul again how much that hurt, mostly because he had no pain tolerance and no one liked to hear his bitching. "Where you been? Ah called but they said you left."

"You called? Muir?" Jean-Paul shrugged that away - or tried to. "I was in Laval, for the most part, after leaving." Which was technically true. He'd based his movements from his home there, at least. "I am sorry I missed your call?"

"It's fine, Ah was just worried was all. Shiro ain't said nuttin' about it," he said, frowning again as he touched his head and then looked at his hand with a touch of blood on it. His annoyed gaze flickered to Jean-Paul, locking his gaze with the Québécois before forcing himself to stand. Yeah, so not doing that again. "Nice reflexes, what happened to yer hair?"

"I cut it off," Jean-Paul said, watching the younger man's movements. "It annoyed me." And it was a simple change to make that would let him distance himself from others. It was amazing, how easily they overlooked someone when they'd made some simple change.

"Ohhh," he groaned, rolling his shoulder back and tipping his head to the side, itching to crack the neck. Of course, it wouldn't because it was metal infused with bone. "Ah kinda like it," he said, turning around and drawing his wings back. "You just visitin' then?"

"Not exactly," Jean-Paul said, tucking his hands into the pockets of the leather jacket he was wearing. "You have been well?"

"Ah'm alright when Ah ain't lookin' to shove mah face in the mud," he joked lamely. "Busy Ah guess. So yer back then?"

"Oui," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "For the time being." He wanted to get this mess with his mutation figured out and then be on his way. Still, it felt like he was forgetting something. He couldn't put his finger on what, but it was a feeling he was very, very familiar with these days. "You have caught me at a bad moment, I am afraid." It was hanging there, the thing he couldn't remember. Just out of reach. "I am sorry for the injuries you took here... but I must be going."

Jay himself felt there was something off to this conversation but he couldn't quite place what and ran a hand through his hair uncomfortably. "Sure Jean-Paul. Ah reckon ya got a lot of people wantin' to see you. Glad yer back though," he smiled, despite the discomfort. "Cause mah cookin' skills are hurtin'." Of course he tried to lighten the heavy feeling of Jean-Paul's cold shoulder.

Jean-Paul couldn't bring himself to explain that what skills he might have had, once, were gone. Shredded and incomplete, just like the rest of his memories. Instead, he nodded briefly and said, "There are books for that, oui?" He didn't want to mention that he wouldn't actually be attempting to see others.

"Well, yeah," he said awkwardly, trying to make up against the rebuff. "Ah guess Ah could use one of those." So much for his idea of getting Jean-Paul to teach him but he shrugged and his wings shifted restlessly behind him. "Well, since yer back, don't be afraid to come knockin'. Ah still go flyin' a lot and you can come if ya want."

Still. That implied, Jean-Paul thought, that they had been flying before. Which meant that the points at which his memory dropped off where the blue-skinned Southerner were concerned... left a wider gap than he'd thought. "Thank you," he said, concentrating just enough to get himself off the ground before pausing. Unfinished business left a bad taste on the back of his tongue, but he didn't know what he was leaving undone. "It is better, I think, to learn things from someone. Practical demonstrations, oui? They are better. If you want to cook well, find someone to show you."

Sucking in his bottom lip, Jay chewed it for a moment before he stopped and again, ran a hand through his hair. "Well Ah was sorta hintin' that you would do it," he explained. "Since, yanno, you taught me pie n' everything." Jean-Paul wanted to leave and it was hard not to feel like he was leaving because of Jay.

"That is not... the best idea right now," Jean-Paul said, reluctant to go into the details but feeling that he owed the young man something. He didn't know why he felt that, but he managed to say, "I am using the books to... remember things, myself. And it is not so easy. Someone who knows things better than I would likely do you more good."

"Oh..." Now he had stumbled into something awkward and shifted on the spot, shoving his hands into his pockets, unable to really address the glaring fact that Jean-Paul might be back for more reasons than he's comfortable sharing. Instead, Jay slipped an easy smile over his face and nodded. "All right, well, you know where Ah live if ya change yer mind," he said, carrying on like nothing had changed, that he didn't notice anything and that they weren't seriously in this moment of awkward. Familiar territory was something safe, comfortable and he clucked his tongue, giving a finger wave as he walked backwards.

"Don't be a stranger."

Jean-Paul didn't reply, just nodded and then rose higher, purposefully gaining unnecessary altitude before he set off, racing toward the horizon line even though he knew he'd never reach it.